A New Normal
by purplehairedwonder
Summary: Together Sam and Jody look for a way to rescue Dean. Sam hits his breaking point. Sequel to 'Refuge.'


**Author's Note:** This is a sequel to "Refuge," but all you need to know to understand this is that Sam showed up on Jody's doorstep after the season 7 finale and she was awesome and supportive.

It was also written in response to some of the Comic Con spoilers we got about a year passing between seasons and Sam quitting hunting. I needed something to fill in the gaps for that move to make sense. Thus, this fic was born.

**Disclaimer:** _Supernatural_ isn't mine.

* * *

**A New Normal**

* * *

Sam slept through the day and all night; Jody suspected that it had been days, if not weeks, since he last got more than an interrupted hour or two. He came into the kitchen on the second morning with a yawn and a serious case of bed-head.

"Good morning," Jody greeted, hiding a grin behind a cup of coffee. "Glad you're finally up."

Sam gave her a surprised look. "How long was I out?"

Jody glanced at the microwave clock: 7:14. "By my count, about twenty-six hours."

Sam's eyes widened. "What? But I—"

"Needed the sleep," Jody interrupted sternly. "You're not going help your brother if you keel over from exhaustion."

Sam shut his mouth and Jody nodded in satisfaction. She then grabbed another mug from the cupboard and poured him some coffee as he dropped into a chair across the counter. She slid the cup to him and he gave her a wan, though grateful, smile that broke Jody's heart. He looked like nothing so much as an abandoned puppy—and Jody had had a bad habit as a kid of picking up strays and taking them home.

"So where do we start?" Jody asked. Sam blinked and Jody clarified: "Looking for Dean. After breakfast, that is."

Sam looked at her as though he'd never seen anything quite like her; the thought that the kindness of others had been a missing staple of the Winchester life broke Jody's heart a bit more.

Finally Sam shook himself. "We research the spell we used to kill Dick Roman," he said.

"Okay," Jody said with a nod. Having a direction was good. "But first, pancakes."

She got dimples in reply and had to turn to the cupboard for pans to hide the smile on her own lips at Sam's response. She couldn't help but think of her own son—before the illness—and how he'd grin wide when she'd make special shapes with his pancakes. She'd try to make animals or cartoon characters or fun shapes and they would end up as androgynous blobs, but he'd love them anyway.

Jody swallowed against the lump in her throat before speaking. "Why don't you go grab your stuff and shower? Breakfast is gonna take a few."

"Are you trying to tell me something, Sheriff?" Sam asked. Jody turned and there was a small twinkle in his eye.

She grinned back. "Young man," she declared in her best Mom Voice, "you stink and have morning breath of a swamp monster. Shower for the good of all mankind."

Sam rose with a chuckle. "Yes ma'am."

Jody listened as his footsteps echoed down the hall and thought that it would be nice to have someone in the house with her again. And then she resolutely did _not_ think about Bobby.

* * *

Research was slower going than either Jody or Sam would've liked. Jody pulled out boxes of Bobby's books that she'd never brought back to storage after helping Sam with Chronos. They'd stayed in the den and maybe Jody had done a little research of her own. Meanwhile, Sam worked his Google-fu.

They started looking for info on the spell—which, Sam told her came from a tablet that was the Word of God. Going with the flow admirably well, if she might've said so herself, Jody started eliminating books while Sam typed away.

Days passed like that with no results. Finally Sam, looking nearly as weary as the day he'd come to her, leaned back in his chair and sighed.

"Maybe we're looking at this wrong," he said.

Jody looked up from another unhelpful tome. "How so?"

Sam shrugged. "The leviathan were sealed away in Purgatory before angels or man came into being." Jody nodded for him to go on. "The only written language from that time then would've been Metatron's recordings of God's word."

"So we're not going to find anything?"

Sam surveyed the mess of books and papers in the living room with a dark look. "I don't think so. What we need is—"

"Another tablet," Jody guessed.

"And someone to read it," Sam added with a nod.

Jody frowned, thinking back to what Sam had told her. "And this demon Crowley took the only person who could read a tablet?"

Sam ran a hand over his face. "Yeah. But I have no idea where to start looking. Crowley also took the only demon that might actually help us find Kevin." He snorted derisively. "And Crowley wouldn't talk, even if I summoned him into a Devil's Trap. Bastard."

"But having a prophet is moot without anything to read," Jody pointed out, though she understood Sam's desire to save an innocent from demons. She'd done some reading on them and the thought of being taken by them made her skin crawl. Her job was to protect the people of her city, but she also was coming to realize that you had to pick your battles with this kind of thing.

"Right," Sam agreed. "So what we need is another angle."

"I'm listening."

"Dick Roman found the tablet Dean and I had Kevin translate."

"Do you think he found more?" Jody asked slowly.

Sam shrugged. "It's worth a shot."

"Sam," Jody said carefully, "your fight at SucroCorp didn't go unnoticed. Dick Roman and a bunch of big wig executives all go missing at once? Cops and Feds have been swarming the place for days." She'd been checking the news while Sam slept or when words started blurring in front of her eyes.

"Good thing you're a law enforcement official, then," Sam said, a hint of that mischievous spark back. "That's our in."

Jody stared at Sam for several moments, letting the words sink in. Then, "You're crazy."

"Formerly," Sam quipped, already shutting the laptop. "You in?"

This wouldn't be the first time she'd used her badge to help Sam. And, well, crazy as it might be, Jody kind of loved the direct approach.

"Let's do it."

* * *

SucroCorp was a bust. Sam flashed an FBI badge and claimed Jody was there in a consultative capacity. The men on the scene bought it and they were in.

They checked Roman's office, storage, labs—Sam got real quiet in the lab with splattered black goo all over the walls and looked pale for the next several hours—even the mailroom. But there was no sign of another tablet.

Or anything particularly useful.

They drove to Sioux Falls in silence, until about halfway back, when Jody said softly from the Impala's passenger seat, "That lab was where it happened, wasn't it." It wasn't a question.

Sam's grip around the steering wheel tightened until his knuckles turned white and he nodded.

Once again, Jody's heart went out to the young man next to her. SucroCorp could only have been a terrible reminder of all he'd lost and was so far failing to regain.

For the first time since Sam showed up on her doorstep, Jody thought that there might not be an answer after all.

* * *

Days passed as Sam and Jody researched one dead end after another. They read books, searched the web, called other hunters. Sam even tried summoning a demon and using a fancy knife to get information. Jody had steered clear of that. A week passed. Then two.

And Sam reached his breaking point.

It was midnight when Jody came back from a Wal-mart run for coffee and carbs, and Sam was nowhere to be seen. His laptop was still on and open books were strewn about the living room. Jody set down her groceries and checked all over the house and the yard, but nothing.

And then it hit her and she grabbed her keys.

There was a crossroads not a mile from Bobby's old salvage yard. And Sam stood in the middle, frozen. Jody got out of her car slowly and approached, worried the younger man might spook. And she really hoped he hadn't done what she'd read about…

But as she got closer, she realized he was looking up at the night sky, the Milky Way shining in all its cosmic glory. The stars had long steered the path for nomads, Jody thought. It seemed fitting.

When she was less than a yard away, Sam looked down and spoke. "You know, all of this started at a crossroads." His voice was thick and raspy, like he'd been crying. But he was looking away so Jody couldn't see his face. She was a little glad for that; he deserved a little privacy at least.

"All of what?" she asked.

Sam shrugged. "My destiny. My family's destiny. The family business. Whatever." He took a breath. "My mother made a demon deal ten years before I was born."

Jody's jaw dropped. "I thought she died in a fire." Not from hellhounds dragging her soul to Hell, assuming the books were right about what happened when a deal came due after ten years.

"She did," Sam confirmed. "She made the deal for me, not her soul."

Jody's insides clenched at the implication. "Sam—"

"She did it to save my father's life, but she still sold my fate." He laughed harshly. "Though I don't blame her. It was meant to be."

Jody was almost afraid to ask. "What was the price?"

Sam finally turned to look at her. Under the light of the waning moon and bright stars, was a wreck. "When I was six months old, a demon came into my nursery and fed me his blood. That was when my mother died."

Jody swallowed that information but remained silent. Sam needed to get this off his chest and she could be a sympathetic ear—one that would actually believe him.

"Twenty-two years later, my father made a deal with the same demon to save Dean's life. He died within minutes."

Jody was starting to understand what brought Sam out here. She was also increasingly certain he hadn't made a deal of his own, thankfully.

"A year after that, Dean made a deal for _my _life." Sam swallowed, eyes far away and haunted. "He got a year, and then I had to watch as hellhounds ripped him apart and took his soul to Hell."

Oh. So the books were right. "Oh Sam…"

Sam laughed wetly—he'd started crying again. "I couldn't get a single demon to make a deal with _me_ for Dean's life. I couldn't rescue him. An angel had to do it." He shook his head. "I've done a lot of shit in my life, but that's always been my biggest failure." After taking a breath, he continued. "That same angel pulled me out of Hell, too. But now he's gone; disappeared alongside Dean. No other angel would ever talk to me, the boy with the demon blood."

Sam turned pleading eyes on Jody. "I don't know what to do. I don't even know if he's alive or dead." He shuddered with a suppressed sob. "I can't help him."

Jody stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Sam. Even though he was much bigger than her, he felt so tiny in the moment. She hugged him tightly, thinking of every motherly hug Sam had missed out on. Eventually, he squeezed back.

She had no idea how long they stood there like that, but finally Sam stopped shaking and Jody stepped back to look at him.

"I think you're at a crossroads, Sam."

Sam looked down at the road then raised an eyebrow. Jody snorted. "Not the literal one, smartass. But one of your own. You weren't able to make a deal before?" Sam nodded. "Now is the time. Make one with yourself."

Sam frowned. "I don't understand."

Jody smiled. "No one who knows you can deny that you love your brother. And no one can deny how hard you've looked these last weeks for a way to help him." Jody took Sam's hands into her own, though they dwarfed hers. "If you have done everything in your power to help Dean, then maybe it's time to move on."

"Move on," Sam repeated flatly.

Jody nodded. "Wouldn't Dean want you to be happy?"

Sam's eyes were distant as memories played across his mind's eye. Jody could only imagine what he was thinking back to, considering the twisted up relationship the brothers Winchester had. But finally he nodded.

"Yes," he said softly. "He would."

"Then here's the deal: you can go back to being the man who couldn't rescue his brother from Hell. Or you can move forward and live a life honoring your brother."

"I don't know…"

"Sam." Sam looked at her in a strange combination of hope and trepidation. "_Have_ you done everything you can?"

The fact that Sam was out here now told Jody the answer to that. She just hoped he saw it, too.

There was a long pause where they stared at each other, but finally, he nodded miserably. "I have."

"Then don't you owe it not only to Dean, but to yourself to move on?"

Sam was silent for several moments before looking back up at the sky. Seconds stretched into minutes. And then Sam glanced back at Jody. There was a soft, sad expression on his face.

"A crossroads, huh?" he said.

Jody's lips twitched. "Hey, I found _you_ here."

"It seemed apropos," Sam replied.

"Yeah." It really did.

* * *

Sam stayed another week, helping clean up after their research and box up the books. Together they visited the burned salvage yard and Sioux Falls cemetery. And slowly, Sam came to accept the decision he'd made that night.

"You know," he said over dinner the night before he planned to leave, "when I was younger, all I could think about was getting out of hunting. I ran from it more times than I can count. But I kept getting pulled back in, so I finally resigned myself to a short, bloody life and a violent death."

"And?" Jody asked, taking a bite of homemade pizza.

"Well," he said with a half-smile, "I got the latter, but it never seemed to stick."

Jody took a sip of beer. Sam had told her more about his and Dean's adventures during the week, including their many deaths and his time in a mental institution not long before. It had been more than a bit overwhelming to hear, so she couldn't imagine _living_ it.

"And now?" she asked.

"I don't really know what to do with it. I never thought I'd get it, so it seems…" He trailed off.

"Overwhelming," Jody supplied.

"Overwhelming," Sam agreed.

"The first time my son died," Jody said thoughtfully, "I thought my world had ended. But my husband and my work helped me through it. They gave me a way to grieve." She put her hands in her lap. "The gray world without him in it started to get color again."

"But?" Sam prompted after a silent moment. He was watching her curiously.

"But the second time, I never thought I'd make it. My son _and_ my husband were gone. And I knew there were things that go bump in the night." Jody shook her head. "The normal wasn't a possibility after that."

Sam looked apologetic, but Jody waved him off. Even though the world seemed like a bigger, scarier place after that realization, it somehow made her feel safer. Like now she could prepare herself better.

"You know how I dealt?" Sam shook his head. "I created a new normal. It wasn't perfect and it wasn't what I'd always dreamed of, but I could live in it. I could grieve and I could work and I could get out of the house now and then."

"Did it work?" Sam asked, leaning forward.

"Yeah, it did." She smirked. "My normal might allow for a few more crazy things now, but it works."

Sam seemed to contemplate that for the rest of dinner. After washing the dishes, they settled in the living room with the TV on and laptops out. While Jody looked over some work, Sam had been researching his options.

"You don't have to leave, you know," Jody said later.

Sam looked up from his computer. "What?"

"You could stay here. It's too quiet with just me," Jody clarified. "The people here like you. I'm sure you could find a job or go back to school." Sam had been considering his nearly complete pre-law degree and his legally dead serial killer status.

Sam smiled. "Thank you," he said. And he seemed to genuinely mean it.

But Jody still wasn't surprised to find him gone in the morning. He'd left his journal and a card with a phone number on it. _Just in case_, the side with the number on it read.

_To a new normal_, the back said.

_- fin -_


End file.
